Small steps to your goals

Lucy Schrader, HES Associate State Specialist
and Building Strong Families Program Coordinator, Personal Financial
Planning, University of Missouri Extension

People and families who tend to plan and write down their goals
are more likely to achieve them. However, people and families
may define
their goals in very different ways.

When reading about goals, we often hear about short term, intermediate
and long term goals. Each of these may have time frames connected
with them. Examples could be a short-term goal of one to two years,
mid-term goal of three to seven years and a long-term goal of 10
years. Unfortunately, these types of definitions do not take into
consideration a person’s or family’s situation. There are
also differences in the way people define these time frames. Short term for one person could be
one week but for another it may be one hour or one month.
Establish a time frame that fits the needs of the person or
family.

Another key to meeting goals is to make sure they are realistic and
manageable. One way to make them manageable is to create small steps
to reach the goal. Here is an activity to do with family members to visualize how small steps help people reach their
goals.

Have everyone line up with their backs against a wall. The goal is for everyone to get to the other side of
the room. How do you get there? Is it possible to leap across the
room in one big step? Probably not. So have everyone go across the
room and count their steps.

Discuss the following:

Did everyone reach the goal?

How many steps did each person take?

Did everyone reach the other side at the same time?

Were there any obstacles (chairs, furniture, etc.)? How
were those obstacles handled?

Does anyone wish they had taken a different path?

Then discuss how this activity relates to setting and reaching
goals in life. We have to decide on a goal and break it down into
manageable small steps or tasks. Some people could accomplish a
goal in five tasks, but another family member might need eight tasks
to finish the same goal. If things get too challenging, people often
quit. It might be that someone needs to rethink a goal and break
it down into even smaller steps or give themselves more time to
reach the goal.

One way to break a goal down into manageable, smaller steps is
to write the goal and then write the steps to accomplish that goal.
An example could look like this:

My goal is:

Today, I will:

Tomorrow, I will:

By the end of the week, I will:

Another way could be breaking a large task into smaller tasks
over a longer time frame.

Maybe your goal is to save for a summer trip and you need $400
to cover expenses, which is a huge amount to come up with at once
for your budget. Try breaking the amount down by days and months.
For example, you could set aside $3 a day for three and a half months
or $2 a day for six to seven months. That may be much more doable
than taking $400 out of the budget all at once.

Make things manageable for you and your family. Small steps make
a big difference in helping you reach your goals!